


The Flat Across the Way

by SuedeScripture



Category: Actor RPF, Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-23
Updated: 2006-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuedeScripture/pseuds/SuedeScripture
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know that film that brings you to tears every time you watch? Or that song you and yours will always remember as ‘your song’? I wasn’t in that film. He didn’t write that song. But we’re still here. This is a story about the things you come to depend on, even if you don’t know it. It might not go the way you think it should, but since when does life ever go the way you planned?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Read as gen or pre-slash, whatever your pleasure.

Pick a big city. You know, one of those cities where all the stories on the big screen happen, where the superhero saves the damsel and a few well-placed extras. Or the one where John Goodfellow’s family is kidnapped and he goes on a vengeful, yet honourable quest to save them. Or the everlasting boy meets girl, falls in love, complication waltzes in and twists the plot. The end of that one is almost always the same, there’s a happily-ever-after of some sort. These things happen in big fantastically romantic cities, after all, with parks full of old growth trees and historical buildings and postcard backdrops. A city with an unbelievable nightlife and beautiful people, a pulse that draws people in and holds them there, the promise of success and love and _that_ life. Go ahead, pick one.

This isn’t that city. Oh, it might look like it: fantastic skyline, lights and landmarks recognized the world over. It might smell like it too, like coffee houses and expensive perfume, Italian leather handbags, sex wax and the salt of an ocean. It might even have a signpost just outside of it on every major highway welcoming you into that fabulous lifestyle you were seeking. And that sign sparked hope, didn’t it? Visions of greatness, because you were so sure – _so positive_ – that everything would change once you got here.

Give it a month. Unless you’re one of those glass-half-full types, the eternal optimists, the ones who just take and take and take and can’t be struck down. One month. Because that’s the thing they don’t mention in the movies, the part where you spend your first week getting your bearings and the second dropping off your resumé, and the third waiting for the phone to ring. It’s that tense, quiet moment right before the movie starts where the studio and the distributor flash a computer animated logo, but before the star’s name shows up. The moment when the music gives you just a little taste of what’s to come.

It’s that fourth week that’s the kicker. That’s the week you owe your first rent payment on a flat you’d planned to vacate just as soon as the first sizable paycheck was in your sweaty palm, when you’ve done it, when you’re on your way. It’s the week when you discover you have twenty-seven dollars and twelve cents to your name and your security deposit was non-refundable. It’s when the people stop looking quite so beautiful when you see them from the stainless steel side of the counter at the cafe around the corner, refilling their coffee, cooking their eggs, wondering if anyone would notice if you ate the pancakes they didn’t even touch when you’re bussing their tables. The city stops looking like the postcard, and the smell is the warm bite of the evening’s last cigarette, mingled with the stench of the overflowing dumpster in the alley.

That’s when the romance dies. And do you want to know why? Because what happens in the movies is dealt out to a select few. Maybe they’re lucky. Maybe they’ve got a higher power in their favour, if that’s the sort of thing you believe in. Maybe they’ve got the whole world figured out and know how to manipulate the system, and they scoff at the rest of us who haven’t yet. I don’t know. The point is that while they live that life, the rest of us are on the sidelines trying our level best just to stand in their shadow.

There’s a man in the flat across the way. A woman lived there before him, young, pretty in her own way. She had brown hair that she dyed black with one of those store-bought kits. She danced to old-school Madonna in her pajamas. She played the cello like it was the release of her soul out the window, curling around the iron rungs of the fire escape and up into the stars. Sometimes I wonder if she made it, if she got to that life on the other side of this.

The man is sitting on the old couch that came with the flat, left by a couple a year ago and that the super never disposed of. Perhaps they’ve tacked another hundred to the rent over there and billed it as ‘furnished’. It wouldn’t surprise me.

The first week, he unpacked a few things from boxes. Standard things: a lamp, some clothes, a pillow and a ragged blanket that is now scrunched to one side of the couch. The guitar came out almost immediately, along with dozens of comp books, those quad-ruled kind with the mottled black and white covers. He’d strum a little, write something down, his mouth moving to words. I wanted to hear his voice, the notes, but the window was closed. He had that look they all have, that inner glow, that knowing little smile, the sparkle of what must be the physical manifestation of hope. It suited him.

Now he’s sat on that decrepit old couch and staring dully at the guitar as though it’s wronged him in some way. The guitar is resolute; it never leaned one way or the other.

I can see it when he wipes his nose with a knuckle, drawing knees in brown cords up close to his chest, folding in on himself. I watch as the particles of hope turn away from him, dissipate and leave him looking wrung and tired and old, maybe older than I think he is. He doesn’t see me crush out my smoke on the iron railing and mimic his pose, because I’ve been there, I understand the feeling pretty fucking well. This is the cold first night of his fourth week. I wish I could tell him that it’ll be fine, he’ll adjust. But the window is closed.

  


There’s a man in the flat across the way. He sits on his fire escape and smokes before he turns in, eleven PM on the dot, every night. It seems early for a lad his age. Twenties, I expect. His clothes say as much, jeans and band t-shirts, flannels and track bottoms. Maybe he has an early job. But he has one. Tomorrow I’ll head down to the factory district, see if I can’t get another short-lived spurt. That’s the way it always goes.

Oh, I’ve been here before. You forget this part though, the part after you’ve gathered up all your belongings and your courage and whatever you’ve got in savings and tried another city. Third time’s a charm, that’s what I told myself. Old wives tales. Or sayings. Shite you hear in songs written by the people who did make it.

The man on the fire escape watches me. To be fair, I think he watches the other windows as well. I wonder if he watches the window beside mine, where that couple argue all day and fuck all night. They have one of those ancient spring mattresses that groans if you turn over, so just imagine other activities. Doesn’t matter. I’m getting used to it now, like this old sofa that smells like corn flakes and mold in the cushion I keep my head away from, or the way the foam is disintegrating inside the cushions. I wouldn’t sleep on it if it weren’t the only thing I have to sleep on besides the floor.

I wouldn’t call it voyeurism. Not really. I’ve not caught him wanking or anything. He’s gone most of the day. He eats beans from the can and pot noodles and sandwiches from take away boxes. He reads a lot. He does laundry on the first Wednesday of the month, but only has enough clothes to fill one load. He doesn’t smoke in the flat, always opens the window and leans out of it, or climbs onto the grating of the fire escape.

There are constants you get used to after awhile. Sirens at night. The chink of change in other people’s pockets. The dull ache in your gut. The glow of that cigarette on the fire escape across the way. They become a routine, a familiar. I’d almost say comfortable, but most of them aren’t.

The routine is that cigarette on the balcony. He lights up and takes in the first drag, tilts back his head with eyes closed. He holds it for four seconds and then opens his eyes, looking at the sky. Can you see the stars in the city? A few, maybe, if the wind is blowing the smog away.

At first I wondered if he was making wishes. Silly, that. Wishing yourself somewhere else from where you are, it’s childish. I wondered then if he was childish enough to try. But no, I understand it now. The look is not future gazing; his eyes aren’t far away. They’re present. _Here I am_ , they say, _you’ve forgotten I was here._

I think maybe he’s just like me, a bloke stuck in limbo. Unable to move forward, unwilling to move back. It’s good to know I’m not the only one.  



	2. Chapter 2

The problem with going down to the beach to see if you can get a few tourists to throw a bit of change in your guitar case is that you need about three dollars for the bus to get you there, or else a few hours to waste walking. Then there is the realization that there are at least ten other people with guitars and cases who had the same idea. Tourists are only generous if you’re decent, and if they haven’t already given their spare change to someone else, or spent it on ice cream or trinkets or sunscreen.

I don’t have sunscreen, and there’s no hope left for the skin on the back of my neck as it is. This place is like gulls that nest on cliffs. You have to show up at the arse crack of dawn to stake out a prime spot where people will notice, but that’s still in the shade.

Fourteen dollars and fifty-four cents, the day’s pull so far. My fingers are about as blistered as my neck, and the woman in the fur coat down by the T-shirt vendor is still singing her tone-deaf heart out.

I don’t get paid at the bindery for another two weeks, and all of that goes to keeping a roof overhead, and the empty refrigerator running. Fourteen dollars and fifty-four cents has to buy me enough food to fill it with something. I wonder if I can splurge on a tube of sunscreen, but four and a half dollars a bottle is a bit rich down here. I’d take a good sandwich for that much.

Some days, I wonder if the struggle is worth it. There was a time when I’d pass change on the street and not pick it up, and when I didn’t worry about paying rent on time or if I could eat a substantial meal at least once a day. It was also a time when every day was exactly the same as yesterday, or the day before, or the same day a year ago. There are people out there who claim they aren’t creative, but I can’t imagine it, working a repetitive job on an assembly line without a certain desperation to just walk away, walk out on the street and proclaim that they are not a peon to some rich corporate syndicated machine. I lived it for so long for the sake of comfort and a full belly and a car, but that wasn’t the reward I wanted.

It’s pride talking, I know. A deadly sin, pride, the very idea that you just might be better than someone else. The knowledge that you have more talent than a woman who’s far enough off her end to wear a mink coat when it’s the middle of August, belting out Streisand into a child’s plastic microphone. No one’s told her she has to replace the batteries.

I wonder if it’s fulfilling, despite that people watch with a mixture of amusement and pity. I wonder if she holds down a job and another life when she isn’t out here. I wonder if people think the same about me. Although you’ll not catch me in mink.

Hey, someone actually gave me a five dollar bill! Thanks, mate! If only everyone was so generous. Buy the CD, whenever I manage to scrape up enough to get studio time.

It hurts to play and my throat aches, but someday,  _someday_  I’ll use this money for studio time instead of food, and I’ll sell CD’s when I play to a crowd. Ten dollars a pop, instead of pocket change, right? Baby steps. Later on it will be gigs at coffee houses with bad acoustics so the patrons can’t hear you anyway. After that are the coffee houses with good acoustics, where potential talent agents stake themselves out.

Nineteen dollars and fifty-four cents. Thanks mate. Fifty more cents and maybe I’ll get an actual meal down the café. Eggs with bacon and potatoes, and tea to soothe the rough out of my throat.

  


About a year ago I did a radio commercial for a brand of aftershave. Read this dialogue that went on about a masculine, woody aroma infused with aloe for a smooth finish. Pushed the accent, lowered the voice into my throat, you know, pulling out all the stops. They loved it. I got three hundred dollars and a bottle of the stuff, which I’ve used just once, because it stung like you wouldn’t believe and left a nasty rash.

Yesterday, I read for the same company. Same building, same advertising agency, it was even the same pompous company rep who loved me the first time.

He barely even blinked.  _Okay, thank you. Can you send in number four?_

Arsehole. I had to rearrange things here at the cafe in order to even go to the fucking audition, and tolerate the look on Jerry’s face, the one that says he’s heard it all before, and you certainly aren’t the first, or fifth or eighty-seventh lowly employee he’s had that wants to see their name in lights, and that he really could give a shit less if you ever get there. 

He and the others don’t hesitate to take the piss either, going on about my looks, how I’d never get a part unless it was for some creature in one of those awful television miniseries of various fairy tales, or the class idiot, or the token limey wherever one was needed.

Of course, I don’t let it burn me in front of them.  _That’s a big talk for someone running a greasy spoon that doesn’t even get rated in the local papers_ , I say, giving them my sweetest smile. Jerry tells me I have to cover for Enrique next Thursday, and disappears into his office.

It does though. Grind at me, I mean, on a certain level. And fuck them, they’re just as bad as the people running the show, the ones that do make the decisions. The ones that if they ever do give someone like me a chance, it’s a typecast one at best. I can tell before they even see my credentials, see it in their eyes right before they start a sentence with  _Look, Mr. Monaghan,_  and end it with  _we’re sorry,_  when they really aren’t. Some of them have the balls to tell you to your face that you don’t look like someone who ought to be in this profession. Others will say you’re better suited to stage, or radio, or fucking hand modeling. It’s times like that when I want to bring up a dozen names that made it big and still never graced the cover of GQ. Someone, somewhere gave them a chance.

Sometimes, when work is so unbearably mechanical, I imagine what it would be like if I  _did_  make it, if I got all the way to the top where I could pick and choose what I wanted, name my price, my terms. I’d almost want to come back here and see Jerry’s red face when I walked in the door.

Knowing Jerry, he’d get all high and mighty on himself, take a picture to prove I’d been there and spout off to anyone who would listen about much guidance he gave me, back in the day.

It’s not enough, knowing that you’re not one in a million, but one of millions. Everyone else thinks they have to go and rub it in. They point out the people who go in for one audition on a whim, or get picked out of a shopping mall for having a pretty face and suddenly they’re it, the next big thing. Then they explicitly tell you you’re not. That’s champagne and caviar, and you’re tea and biscuits. It makes you wonder, of the millions who try, how many of them never make it? How many say this will be the very last go and if it doesn’t happen, they go back home, get a real job, watch TV and try not to think of what might have been if it was them on the other side of that screen?

Christ, I’ve got to get out of here. “Order up.”


	3. Chapter 3

Bugger four AM. Bugger Jerry and his fucking café. And the bus that didn’t get me to the audition on time yesterday. Just once I want to sleep until noon.

Another day. Another fifty-four dollars. Jerry is very careful to keep his kitchen staff from over-stepping the eight-hour mark. God forbid we should get a minute of overtime. Enrique has four kids under the age of ten to feed and clothe, and Wally has six. I suppose it’s good enough of Jerry to employ them, and me. This life is a hundred times better than where they’ve come from. I suppose I shouldn’t complain so much.

Applied for a bar-backing job at a restaurant on the strip yesterday. If I get it, it will give me another fifty a day, with tips. That way, I could take another day off to go to more auditions.

One thing about four AM: it’s quiet. People are asleep, not as many cars on the street, no shouts from other flats. The bed sheets aren’t very clean, but they’re cool. The snooze alarm will go off in another two minutes, but until then, peace and quiet that’s so rare here.

Although today, there’s something else that has me on my feet instead of dozing until I’ve got to leave. Sounds like bells ringing, but it’s not Sunday. Sounds like a parade far away, carrying high over the buildings. A garbage truck roars up barring all other sound, the loud irritable beeping as it backs into the alley below, but I could swear there was… something.

The fire escape above mine has its ladder drawn, but it isn’t my imagination, I’m sure. It’s music, not just telly or someone’s old radio alarm blaring, but real music on the wind above the city. There’s only one other way up.

In my bathroom cabinet is an old, rather bent up metal nail file and a hairpin, both of which came with the apartment. An elderly woman lived here before, and died here too, the super told me. She’d no children, no kin, nothing at all to depend on but a neighbor who complained of a smell. There must have been so much fear in her last days.

The door on the top floor is heavy steel, painted an ugly green grey like the color of hospitals or schools with _Roof Access_ spray-painted across in badly stenciled letters. It’s closed with an old padlock instead of a regular handle with a deadbolt. That’s the thing about old buildings no matter where you live, nothing is ever up to code.

Now, jimmying a lock is an acquired talent, but not necessarily a difficult one. Don’t be so surprised. Most blokes have done this sort of thing a few times, breaking into their father’s liquor cabinet, or into a condemned old shack on a dare. I’ve been up to the roof before when I helped the super clean out some old lumber that was a fire hazard. Got twenty-five dollars and a beer for it, but more importantly, I saw that the key that opened this lock wasn’t much more than a bit of chewed-looking metal like this file here, which if you press in with the pin and then wriggle it just right… Ah.

And there he is.

The man from the flat across the way is singing from his rooftop. Singing in a voice so clear and rich and full, I feel like I should have heard it before, through closed windows, brick walls and alleyways. He sings something about dawn and happiness and falling in love, but even without the words, the song is warm and present and joyous, like something I haven’t felt in ages.

He sings with a passion, his eyes closed and face to the rising sun, hands strumming out the rhythm and the melody on that old guitar of his. Light shines through him like glass. Would he ever be content without that guitar? I don’t think so. This is the look he had when he first came here, the glow from inside, that place where he’s completely free. Why on earth can't They see him?

Isn’t that always how it goes? You feel torn, don’t you? You wish him success, because it’s what everyone wants when they come here. It’s what we all work for, waking up with the sun to hit the daily grind. But there’s another part, that selfish, greedy little bit of you that wants to keep him hidden away, isn’t there?

Your own private, beautiful secret.


	4. Chapter 4

What sort of bastard company lays you off  _after_  a day’s work? Is it meant to make me feel better, that they deigned to give me this one last day’s wages? Thanks, you bollocking lot of arseholes. Outsourced my arse. By a goddamned machine. A machine that tells another machine to glue a damned spine to a cover, because the machine doesn’t ask a coffee break. Turn me out with a fistful of small bills into the rain, you’re _sorry_  my arse.

“Boyd. Hey! Number 34!”

Oh,  _shite._  “Sir…”

“Your rent’s late, again. You can’t keep doing this.”

“I know, it’s just, I got laid off today, and I’ve only got less than half of it on me. I just need–”

“Look, just give me what you’ve got, and I’ll give you ‘til next week, but I need it all by then or you're out.”

 _Fuck_.

What the fuck do I do now?

Now I’ve no money at all, no food, not even a can of soup to tide me over. Fuck. It’s worse here than anywhere else. I don’t know what to do.

It’s so strange the things you come to depend on. Now the light in the flat across the way is out and the young man, my only company, risk it to even say my friend isn’t there when I need him to be.

I can’t live like this anymore, I can’t make it in this horrible place. Where are you?

Single pane glass has no protection from the cold seeping in from faulty seams. Goddamned flat feels like an icebox. I can see my breath hitting my window, and his is dark. 

And then suddenly it’s not.

He’s soaked to the skin, nothing but a flimsy jacket and a t-shirt to keep out the storm. His hair is darkly plastered over his forehead, shoulders shaking with the cold as he struggles out of the jacket, peels off the shirt and leaves the area of the window.

Don’t go to bed yet, lad. Come and have a smoke. Come back.

Christ, the lightning must be hitting the rooftops. Wouldn’t that be a riot? We’d evacuate down these very fire escapes, him and me, stand nearby in the freezing rain with the smell of smoke and rain and soaking wet garbage. Would we say a word to each other then?

Would we now, him at his window and me at mine? Hello, you. I wonder if he knows I’ve watched him as much as he watches me. This is the first time we’ve looked at each other without pretending not to. His face is mangled through the sheeting water, but he looks serene and calm, much more than I feel now. He is smiling at me, his hand raised and pressed to his own window, a mirror of mine. It nearly feels like he’s put that hand on my shoulder, and I don’t feel quite so alone anymore.

He’s gone when I open my eyes, but there are numbers written in the condensation. He’d have had to write them backwards from his side, and the two is a little wonky, but it’s a two. A phone number.

My phone hasn’t rung in a hundred years, and yet I keep it just in case. Just in case.

Heh. Was that a tinge of hope I just heard in my own head? When did we have any of that left, I wonder?

It rings once and then... then there’s static air.

“Hello?” 

“Hey. You okay over there?”

His voice is soft and low and British, and how strange that’s a comfort. It feels closer to home, like something I’d almost expected. “I don’t like storms.”

I hear an airy puff of laughter and it sounds real. “When I was little I had a room in the attic, and when it rained, I’d hear it drumming on the roof, just a constant soft noise. It always lulled me to sleep. My brother hated it though. He’d come in when we were really small and sleep with me, when it rained like this. And he’s got a year on me.”

“I miss home.”

“Me too.”

I know he knew what I meant, not just home: Scotland, but home: family, home: friends, home with no fears and worries.

“Matt would never admit that now, that he was afraid of rain when we were kids. Something to bring up at parties.”

“I got lost, once. In the rain. I was... six years old, I think. I took a wrong turning on a trail in the empty lots behind my flat and I came out behind an old mill where big kids hung about. I hid but they found me. They found me and it was raining and lightning and I...”

I swallow. Why I’m telling him this? I must seem such a prat to him. I’m afraid to look back up out the window, and see him laughing. “Well, it was a long time ago, that. Don’t like storms anyway.”

“Better reason than my brother, any road.” There is no laughter in his voice. No pity either. I appreciate that.

“I still feel... lost, when it rains. It... It doesn’t feel so alone when your light is on over there,” I’m whispering down the phone, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a secret, and I’m bent to whisper it in his ear. “I don’t think anyone’s listening to me.”

“I heard you on the roof the other day. The song you sang. It was beautiful.”

How does he do that? He says things without saying them.  _I’m listening, mate._

“Thank you.” The water melts his features, just like the darkness at night, the smoke of his cigarette, the warp in the windowpane.

“Where would you be, if you weren’t here?” It’s a strange question to ask him. I don’t want him anywhere but here, even as I wish myself away. Childish, that. My stomach growls, and I lie back on the sofa. If I ignore it, it’ll go away.

“I’d be... in a big house in the Hollywood Hills. Or a loft overlooking the Thames.”

I laugh, just to let him know I’m listening too. His voice is calming and I can hear the faraway smile in it.

“I’d tell my agent I won’t do Lynch’s next movie for less than fifteen million, and I’ll buy a retreat in Vancouver. And I’ll be on the Tonight Show, and get swag at parties and win a BAFTA for something or other.”

I love his laugh. A soft rumble, like thunder from a dying storm. “What about you?”

My tired eyes slip closed. “All of that, but make it a Grammy instead. Or an Oscar. I’ll write the theme song to your big breakout. We’ll both clear out the Kodak and everyone will say, ‘Where would entertainment have been without them?’ And I’ll just say, I’ll tell them, 'But we’ve been here all the while. You just wouldn’t listen.'”

I hear the bitterness in my own voice, but I can’t take it back. My fault for breaking the fantasy. “Sorry.”

“S’alright. Bloody true, anyway. They’re all bastards. Can’t see past their own fucking pompous needs, can’t remember when it was them.”

I nod. He can’t see me nod. Minutes pass, and the static provides some strange link.

“Nah,” his voice abruptly cuts the silence. “That was a load of shite I just said. I’d still be here trying. I don’t know how to be anything else. You either, right? Fuckers can’t stop us. You and me, someday we’ll get there.”

“Yeah.” I hear the sound of a flick across the line, hear him inhale deeply, hear the grinding of the window sash. I blink my eyes open and see nothing but the splotchy window, the rain letting up to a sprinkle, and the orange glow of a cigarette ember across the way. He’s young yet, even if it’s not confidence he speaks of, but just plain hope. I don’t know how many more somedays I can cling to at my age.

“Hey, over there,” his gravelly voice floats over the line, and I think about stringing tin cans together, talking through them like children.

“Mmm.”

“You’re falling asleep on me. You can ring off if you want.”

“Okay.”

By the time I wake in the morning, I realize I’d not said goodbye, and we’d not even introduced ourselves properly so I could stop referring to him as the man across the way. And no, I’d not even had the frame of mind to copy down the phone number to a piece of paper, should I want to hear his voice, let him talk me to sleep again. But the storm has passed, and the heat of the sun has melted the numbers away.


	5. Chapter 5

A bar back is a glorified dishwasher. You set up the mixers, slice garnish. You watch the bar man charm the ladies with his looks and those flippy moves with the liquor bottles. You wash glasses and sweep the floor. Every now and again, when it’s really busy, you get to mix a cocktail or two yourself. It’s a bit like the difference between not being called back for a lead in an HBO movie and being asked to come back for a bit part for the Hallmark channel. I’m not entirely sure which is more pathetic, but part is a part, right?

But the people here are friendly, the money is decent, and the tips are under the table. The cooks can even be persuaded to box up food that’s been sent back for having mushrooms by accident, and leave it on the warming shelf until closing time.

I put in my two weeks at Jerry’s. Maybe it’s premature, but there’s really only so much constant dogging a bloke can take. Besides, the look on his face when I told him I had two other jobs lined up was priceless. The job at the restaurant is nights, five to ten. Pays three dollars more per hour, and the customers come in after work instead of before. They’re not in a rush, and they’re happy to sit and have a drink and chat about the weather or the game or what have you. They’re happy. It’s amazing what a difference that makes.

It’s different, though, to be coming home when the sun has long since set. Reminds me that I don’t live in the best neighborhood, though I’d be a sorry bloke for someone to try to jump on the street. They could steal my take-away. I used my tips for the bus, and the rest for a six-pack at the corner store.

Maybe it’s impulsive for me to indulge a little. Do you think it’s foolish? One role doesn’t guarantee more, but it  _could_ , and that’s the key. It only takes one person giving you a chance, right? And this is a chance, if only a little one. A credited speaking part. Who’s to say it won’t lead to something bigger and better?

I want to tell that to the man from the flat across the way. Now he’s standing by his own building in the cold damp, with that guitar case slung over his shoulder and blowing on his fingers for warmth. What are the odds we'd finally manage to come home at the same time, close enough to finally say hello?

  


I can’t believe this. One goddamned day. Just one, and they change the door codes so I can’t get in and get my own fucking stuff out of my flat. Have to stand here and wait for someone to open the door like some stalker. I imagine my notice of the change is taped to my door. Inside, where I can't get to it. They couldn’t be more fucking clear about it, could they?

“Oi, mate. Braveheart!”

Shite. And here’s the last bloke I want to look in the face now. Go away, lad. You don’t want to be mates with the likes of me.

“You toting a guitar or a gun in there?” he says, all teeth and cheek. Bugger off. The only fucking possession I’ve got left, this. Never mind my fucking super will be making off with every notebook I’ve filled up. If I hear any one of my songs on the radio you can bet I’ll be suing the pants off of that fucking bastard and anyone else involved besides. Not that I’d have the proof to back it up.

“You all right?”

I’m fine, lad. At the moment I’m wondering if I should try sleeping on the promenade or under the pier. “They changed the fucking door code on me, that’s all.”

“You were packing. Last night. Your notebooks and things.”

“Aye.” His words are almost an accusation, and I can’t meet his eyes for it. “They’ll… They’ll be clearing out my flat tomorrow. I got the notice yesterday. I can’t let them take my books, though. I need to get in there and get them.”

He’s quiet. Quiet and still, and christ, I feel so ashamed admitting it to him, that I’ve failed, and I’m done for, that I’m giving it up and going home, just as soon as I can figure out a way to afford a plane ticket. They could always deport me for something useless and petty. Loitering. Begging in the streets. Dreaming too big.

He shifts the takeaway box in his hands. “This is… erm. Well, I don’t know what’s on the menu, actually. But it’s still warm. D’you want to come up to mine?”

The night air is crisp and cold in my lungs, and he offers a nervous smile from where he stands. Is he… Could he really be offering what I think he is?

“I… I mean I…” he stutters, “I can help you move your boxes. I don’t have much space, but…”

“You don’t have to do that. Not for me.”

“I don’t  _have_  to,” he answers, and grins.

He climbs the steps and unlocks the front door of his building, and then up three floors, just like mine. His door is painted a noxious green, darker than the green of the hallways.

His flat is messy and small with a tiny kitchenette against one wall, and a tiny bathroom on the other. He has a mattress with no box spring and a twisted knot of blankets, and boxes upon boxes of notebooks. Comp books, like the ones I write in. His window looks out to another across the way, a darkened one room flat with dirty sofa by the window and boxes by the door. It’s almost like a window into a different universe, separated by brick and concrete and dead, lonely air.

“Chicken fettuccine?”

“What?”

“Fuck,” he says with a shake of his head. “I’m Dom, by the way. Dominic Monaghan. Dom.”

“Billy Boyd.”

“Billy Boyd.” He has a styrofoam carton of pasta, two mismatched forks, and that everfucking grin when he plops himself down on a box top and looks up at me. “Put down that guitar case, then, Billy Boyd.”

“I… I ought to get back down there. Someone will open that door and I just have to wait. I need to get my books out of there and I need…”

“Hey.”

The man’s – Dom’s – eyes are very blue and wild and so free of everything I feel weighed down with. I wish I knew how to be like that.

“Come on, sit. Eat some of this with me. Then we’ll go back and wait, and get your books together. This is just a bad patch for you, that’s all. Beer?”

Hah. A bad patch, three times over. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

“’Course you can. It gets worse before it gets better, but you just keep going. Stick with me and you’ll be all right, yeah? Besides, I need you around to write that theme song, remember?”

Dominic Monaghan. What would that look like in lights over the El Capitan, I wonder? Look at him. I could just imagine him trussed up in a suit on a red carpet, mugging for the cameras. People would never believe he’s just some lad who lives in the downtrodden dredges of this godforsaken city. He has the look of someone on his way up. Yet, still he offers a roof and food and more importantly a little company to a sorry bloke, a stranger at that, who’s on his way down.

“Sit, man. Stay awhile and eat; you look like you’ve not had a meal in a while.”

The fettuccine is lukewarm, but good. Delicious, actually. Dom is quiet and twitchy. How strange it would be to watch him from this side, eating pot noodles, reading those books, or writing in them, leaning out the window to have that last cigarette. I wonder if the stars look different from his window. They must have finally heard his voice.

“What are you giggling about, Boyd?”

“Nothing. I just…”

“Just what?”

“It feels like we’ve known each other forever. But we only just met today.”

Dom looks out his window and grins. “Nah mate, I think we’ve known each other for a long time. You just never opened your window.”

I look out the window too, to that bleak place I used to live in. It wasn’t voyeurism. Not really. Maybe it was just two blokes whose paths failed to cross until now, but came just close enough to peek through a window.

What are the odds, out of the millions of windows in this city? It’s a big city, after all, one of those big fantastic cities where all the magic happens. There are millions of people, like me, like him, trying to jump in and claim the damned spotlight for ourselves, get our fifteen minutes and hopefully more. What are the odds that we should meet? Do the odds get better if we make a go of it together?

Maybe we’ll see.

  
**The End**   



End file.
